My science teacher had similar comments; however, he was really careful with the stuff. It can cause a lot of problems, it's deceptively dangerous it is not like a poison. Different people have different thresholds, plus you also have younger generations growing up with higher exposure rates for their whole lifespan which makes them less tolerant. Handling it with your hands is one thing, eating it is another. In a powder or gas it's bad stuff --- which is why procedures are over protective, if you spill a liquid they act as if you atomized it into the air because legal policies are designed to fight future lawsuits-- they go to stupid extremes to make extra sure that employee who sucked on thermometers doesn't blame them for his problems simply because they had him near the stuff on the job. We need those laws that allow people to sue evil employers, but the result is over protection and greedy people who abuse the system (who are not much different than the greedy employers who started the mess.)

Also keep in mind, you didn't play with mercury as your job-- it was just an amusing thing you did for a short period until it was no longer amusing.

Personally, I've noticed the warnings about eating fish caught locally get worse every few years from when I was a kid fishing with my father. A smaller lake can be ruled off limits if contaminated and it takes an amazingly small amount to ruin a lake... you'd think some ex-spouse would think of devaluing a house/cabin by destroying a lake... Thank goodness it hasn't... there's another thing for insurance to jack you on...

His personal political views are separate from his work. Yes, even if they influence his work they are a separate matter. He may agree with the people he cites but putting their words in doesn't make his history work invalid. He doesn't lie or do the history wrong or even mislead but he does use the facts he chooses to collectively push central themes which are aligned to his opinions. That is no different than anybody else except that he is far more open about it; he doesn't hide it. People who disagree grasp at things to attack him; but the proper counter is to use history. His history is not invalid; now his opinions can be argued on that point but he is not sneaky like traditional history is under it's guise of being neutral or the modern technique of giving too much to weak positions (much like how the media gives equal time to crackpots under the guise of being fair.)

As far as omitting things-- that is a classic fallacy attack that is really hard to make actually stick. Anybody can be attacked for omission. I don't begrudge him for skipping things that are widely known or overly complicating matters-- which one can so easily do. At some point you have to edit for the space allotted. As far as big controversial matters, given how different most history is; I don't think he needs to waste space addressing things that are bound to be yelled about, discussed, or thought about critically.

What would be nice is a split textbook which mixes traditional along with Zinn. I don't think much would get left out (again, as an overview for a non historian, you can't cover everything.) Besides, we are talking school... students have an attention span less than a goldfish and zero interest in the past (unless it's TV reruns) everything has to be summarized. Now if Zinn can get people to think at all or get motivated in anyway-- that is GREAT. Besides, most people tend to get conservative with age so it's not going to turn society into Marxists or whatever.

As far as "I lived in" crap, I don't care. Doesn't make you an expert. Just because you saw things that are worse doesn't mean I'm wrong. It's not black and white. Politically, I'm outside the whole mainstream in the USA. The USA mainstream ranges from mild to strong authoritarian and I'm medium Anarchist, in absolute terms on the freedom scale. Economically, I'm not in the Anarchist half of the scale but the mainstream is. I do know what I'm talking about; I've dabbled quite a bit in both PoliSci and Anthropology, but I'm not an expert, just well read (and it's academic stuff not infotainment. I also never owned a TV.)

When you sue for damages you are in CIVIL COURT. That is a different system, you can't do jail time and about all you can do is deal with money.

Stealing is a criminal offense; you'd have to find a criminal law on the books you could get them for doing this. I hear that racketeering criminal law was somewhat broad...

As far as the amount of $$ as a civil case one shouldn't be able to sue as punishment but only for damages (which they seem to extend to the limit with mental harm etc.) This big corps always seem to get the money knocked down on some sort of grounds of the harm caused wasn't as big as the $ amount or just bribing judges like the supreme court did with the exon spill.

I read Zinn's book on my own; my schools never mentioned anything remotely like it.

I have no objections to Zinn's book. It's not dry history and seems more like modern anthropology vs old anthropology. The academic criticisms sound similar. He uses actual people's words instead of feeling he has to censor them by just describing their actions on a timeline. You can't avoid being called propagandist if you put in the words of historically influential people! If you put in the opposition you are likely to still be criticized because the losers are likely to be less convincing (historically, they did lose after all.) It is a stark contrast to old dry history which has considerable bias of it's own. I don't know why people think pop history or official history as completely neutral. It NEVER has been. Zinn is no worse than the other historians; arguably, he is above average. Given his purpose was to compensate for existing bias he obviously went bias in another direction; rather than repeat what was already done or widely known. Zinn's work is supplemental as a result. I'm not for it being used alone.

PROPER history will give you some of Hitler's speeches, his words and his propaganda. Not a bunch of battle crap and events! Which is what we get. The holocaust is a rare exception in history education in that they don't just tell you a sterile summation - they are more like Zinn. You don't learn anything worthwhile from Nazi history (in school) except the more Zinn like coverage of the holocaust. We don't learn why the Nazi rose to power why they were were good at destroying democracy how that tiny goofy looking man convinced a relatively highly educated modern democracy to become what it did. An easily forgotten and never understood summary of events is all we got (that is, you couldn't understand with what was presented.) You don't LEARN anything, you get FACTS. It's only by LEARNING; that is by gaining an understanding, that you can stop from repeating past mistakes because history never repeats but is does rhyme. Nazi history is extremely biased (we won) but it should include some of their stuff and one wouldn't need to worry much because it's so vilified already. Also given how anti communist we are here you think we'd get SOMETHING but we have zero coverage; it's pure propaganda.

Zinn isn't invalid. It's a different style but it is not false. I want to know what/how/why, not just the institutional log book. A great many changes in society are bottom up; often by a minority group (like the revolutionary war.) Revolutionary war history is pretty good and more Zinn like in how it was covered; it is inspiring stuff as it should be, one should "get it" and if it was handled like other topics in history it would be considerably different. I remember what I had in school for it, I knew more at the time so I could see as a teen how it was censored and sterilized despite it being more Zinn like. It also had a great amount of "bias" from the founders own words, it also didn't present the British side at all. Like Ben Franklin's speech which ended the constitutional convention was censored in the textbook; they didn't mention Franklin's son was jailed as a traitor or why his son was a loyalist (along with a large portion of the population or that it was a small group that got the whole thing going etc.)

Zinn dispels the authoritarian bias in our history; which also rubs people the wrong way, the US is after all, quite an authoritarian society (if you don't like that tough, perhaps you should unload that word and accept it's real meaning.)

Don't act like members of the human race! humans suck. Sound ridiculous? It kind of is. But it's not much worse than telling men to not be aggressive and violent against their natural inclinations. That doesn't work so well either, but we try... we don't evolve because we won't allow evolutionary pressures, artificial or natural.

Humans evolved to be petty tribal creatures living in small tribes. We are not evolving anymore and situations like our current global economics don't create evolutionary pressures -- at least not positive ones... If you are a smart ape you can do the majority of jobs in the world; that is, until robotics takes over (which is capable already and the transition is only beginning.) We are not competing for the best as much as we are competing for the most desperate. Manufacturing robotics won in the USA decades ago that is why worse-than-slave labor in the 3rd world was used-- because those desperate humans can still beat the robotics... until today. Now we shall see the transition as the desperate 3rd world people lose the last hold out position humans had against the robots (in manufacturing.) This isn't a new situation; technology transitions created similar situations in history.

Human nature is tribal. Tons of science to back that up. People are all Little Eichmanns as proven in countless studies of various situations, where tribalism is at the root of some of them. It doesn't take hardly anything to abstract consequences for one's actions which makes it so easy to do evil. If people would just seriously study and learn about the nature of EVIL they would avoid systems which promote it. You'd think religious types would actually learn about the "devil" and thereby learn something useful... even if it's fictional, it's metaphorical for emergent behaviors in humans.

Belief aside, we don't study to avoid situations that promote bad things - in large part because we falsely believe (without evidence) that people are responsible for such things; instead of realizing the environment is a much much larger factor. Naturally, in a society that prides itself on individualization they are going to be the most blind to the truth. (I live in the USA, which is so ironically conformist.)

You don't think about or really care about sweat shops making your clothes - it's too far removed and those people suffering are not in your tribe... if they were, you couldn't ignore the problem so easily (it's not exactly tribal based; however, if you felt more connected to those people you'd not ignore it as easily.) You steal tiny things from your employer, that is normal-- not even thought of as stealing. pencil etc. It's not a big deal; plenty of studies on that. Well, when you save $5 on some clothing your stealing from others in a similar "harmless" situation. Besides, just look at how sales motivate people - now undo the sale and increase prices -- that is what fair trade does; relying on the consumer's to police everything with their $$$ is beyond crazy and all the science backs that up. Shopping is all about the experience; you pay for that gratification and a few minutes when you unpack it at home, then it's all gone and you have to shop more to get that experience again... which has to have roots in hunting/gathering behavior. Most ads are about the experience; making you shop and only a minority are getting you to switch brands (that is right out of modern advertizing 101.) Anyhow-- the point is, all that increasingly advanced psychology is to get you lost in the shopping experience which goes a long way in masking any minor considerations like fair trade. A 10% off coupon works really well-- now if you have Chinese vs US products and you don't need a coupon... Hopefully my rambling is making some connection; there are many aspects to outcome.

Globalization is NOT a good thing and we have to stop portraying it as such. Now don't go to extremes and think we should have none of it; but like most things it has a range of options. We are too extreme on 1 side today and it needs to be moderated; the major limitation today is FUEL PRICE and the few remaining import taxes. We need MORE. Think about robust distributed design--- globalization does not lead to that, it creates monolithic centralized models prone to things like a localized disaster raising all LCD monitors around the world etc. We don't need prices to be that low and people don't need to buy tons of shit. Hell, they design our food now so we chew it LESS so then we eat faster! I'm not kidding, they've put decades into that and it's to the point where I often see articles mentioning people need to eat slower and chew their food! Who'd ever think we would have serious articles having to tell people things like that? Again, comes back to the system... we need infinite economic growth to maintain the ponzy scheme economic model so we must make people consume more artificially to maintain growth. Some even claim that the embracing of planned obsolescence post WW2 is what saved the USA from another depression and beat the USSR (and it probably was a factor.)

The powerful (winners) have been writing the mainstream history for a long time. In addition history is hardly even taught anymore; and the bit that is has been done poorly. They take great people like MLK and turn them into a phrase and an icon while it seems to be purposely removing the aspects that made them truly great. Summation is necessary, but it has been harmful either by accident or by intent - the academics seem to do a better job so one wonders how that gets lost on the mainstream education of the topics.

My public history education was quite poor. The only good aspect is we didn't have to memorize and recall dates; but we didn't do hardly any reading. Reading is the primary method (and best) for learning history... and any reading assignments are hacked around by technology for the simple homework (the homework/exam being the only modern means to force reading, it has been circumvented-- it's weaker than a 4 digit password.)

http://historyisaweapon.com/

That made my day. Somebody else sees it permeating society too!

I often wonder if our authoritarian society fosters these kinds of mental coasting, a mental laziness which is habitual because of the nature of the society to allow one to run on autopilot for so many aspects of like. Technology being a big factor as well; however, more chaotic natural settings makes one routinely have to think about little things all the time which also do not fit a clear repetitive pattern. (The nature of modern jobs has to also has to be a factor. )

The attitudes regarding responsibility is another factor; you don't have to be concerned if you just delegate thinking to something else.

Little Eichmann are also something to ponder.

I know some people in academic research; retired and current.
The system is fucked up; to use the expression of the youngest one.

In pursuit of "perfection" we have so much worrying about oversight to prevent waste and corruption that was already lower than everywhere else that we continually clamp down and harm the system more every "reform." This extends into the publishing system which also has a "gold stars" approach where it's all about quantity and not quality. A big earth shattering research paper is foolish; you milk it for dozens of lesser papers almost nobody reads (and creates more research work.) So now we need IBM to device an AI to handle the volume when it probably could go down by a factor of 100 (that said, active topics are still too much for a human to keep up with.)

Creative science isn't even required-- we just need to fund wasteful stuff that politicians ignorantly rail against as being pointless. Some marine biologist wasting time studying some creature we don't eat... like sharks... finding out why bacteria don't cling to their skin like other creatures might be a total waste; however, that led to super anti bacterial coverings (which you don't see because somebody was allowed a trivial patent on publicly funded research... the real invention was the "pointless" research.)

If you, the reader, has any experience with office politics or politics you know the popular underhanded technique of supporting something while undermining it.

Overhead, corruption, and incompetence are too often used as an excuse; many times it IS simply an underhanded attack by the "supporters." When NYPD spends $60,000 while saying it's going to cost more for only 60 cameras there are people involved who WANT it to be as expensive as possible of a deterrent. A high profile test group like NYPD will get cited all over the nation. Given how badly it is needed and demanded by the public, the costs are going to have to be high to deter widespread common use. Despite how actually cheap it would be - I bet their flash lights cost more... I had a cheap pen camera from china that was in that price range; it didn't last long or store much video but that was 6 years ago.

This is also where greedy capitalism comes in because that is all about how much the market is willing to pay--- and they've got to make sure this is a niche market so it doesn't have to compete with the extremely cheap mainstream market.

Sure, the way public budgets are managed is they take all projected costs (on the high side) then divide them out in ways that makes things like this seem like it's $10,000 a camera -- and one can sometimes spot the traitors because they'll focus on such false estimates.

Now it could be this is a totally honest move by NYPD and their high costs are because they are preparing for a full scale deployment with this just being a testing group. I'm just too cynical to take things at face value... wonder if any reporters exist who can hang around enough to pick up on such things anymore.

Oh, I did think about it. Accuracy in general predictions is different than Accuracy in specific detailed predictions. We can do a great job predicting it will be freezing in December; that is highly accurate and our model of the system is good enough for that. We can't accurately tell you that much about next week. Now perhaps I should have used Precision instead but I was trying to be easier to understand... A great simulation of the real fluid dynamic hell would have poor precision which would contradict previous simulated results... there is a point of diminishing returns but we do not know what that point is. Perhaps we are there already and should stop investing in that direction? doubt it.

I am sure not going to be a fool and pray to some higher power to show me a sign or place trust in some believer's ignorant guessing... Or people who simply like their money so much they don't dare "risk it" even though it is usually never risk but simply selfishness. They invent defensive behaviors to justify being self centered pricks who want nothing to change (because that benefits them in the present.) A lot of funding has been going into attacking the progress of science in this area.

It doesn't help people to bash the best stuff we currently have. It's not a junker car that is going to die anyway. It's science and when it doesn't work well you pour MORE resources into it. Now even the experts are not in strong support of simulated results for deciding huge things or the level specificity they strive for; however, it depends on what kinds of things you are asking. When you bash it as being worthless and something to dismiss you HARM the science and when it gets good enough to help scientists with their work (by their own expert opinion) it also harms anything they say that incorporates it and eventually it harms the working results. Which is easy to do when you can just nit pick the limitations and there always are limitations... It could be 100x more accurate and still be dismissed in the same way-- as if no progress was made-- again, harming science.

Picking on science reporting-- I'm all for that, they all suck big time. But to bash these expensive projects to advance science because they don't work as well as you (the non expert) like or because they fail is NOT WISE. In fact, failure is more important to science than success is. now you think about that.

I know people who do or have done research work. If people put the skepticism and cynicism science gets into advertizing, politics, or religion we'd all do better.

Only focusing on the monetary aspects of this:

Lawsuits are costly and time consuming for everybody; especially when they lack solid evidence like audio/video.

Today cameras are dirt cheap. data storage is too! It keeps getting cheaper.

Simulations are loosely similar to doing unit testing in programming.

The random chaos involved is not purely random; just way way beyond human comprehension. The statistical patterns may exist in the noise to be discovered someday - no, it won't describe the system in any reproducible way but it will increase accuracy for increasingly detailed predictions. Accuracy is inversely related to the level of prediction. We don't know the curve between these two without a great deal of work. Think of breaking encryption, brute force can be impractical but if you apply statistics (finding weakness patterns) you greatly reduce the amount of work guessing (huge understatement, you go from billions of billions to just thousands.)

I remember the models for my region, all but 1 said we'd get more rain and that 1 said it would be the same. None of them said less rain. We've had more rain as predicted by the simulation (the span was about a decade, it was climate not weather prediction I'm citing here.) Also, if they ran 25 (I think it was just 4) and most were correct - then it was a good simulation. If just 1 matched reality, it is still a good simulation! The problem is when no simulation remotely matches the outcome; then you have a LOT of work to do. Like I said, it's fluid dynamics, the longer it runs and the more detailed the greater the parallel universe of possible outcomes.

Climate change:
It's extremely general and obvious ever since they figured out Venus. Then it was figuring out how much heat... and after that the complex predictions so we know how much is too much. That is done too. What we are doing now is trying to get even more detail for some reason; which probably has to do more with money and political long term planning at this point. So we have ignorant people dismissing the solved problems while citing the extraneous work as it approaches the limits of understanding. Bringing up weather prediction is even more extreme in the ignorance.

You know this stuff wouldn't be controversial if we lived on the moon... planetary and climate science wouldn't apply to us and upset certain people.

Radioactive materials concentrate up the food chain so I suppose this is one way to let nature clean it up for you.

Radioactive Germans probably costs more to the national health service than buying the meat. Meat that only makes you sick, probably doesn't cost much; however, cancer is expensive.

Perhaps it is a conspiracy, we don't want some Blond Haired, Blue eyed, big nosed man with a german accent calling himself PiggyMan! I'm sure the Muppets have a job for him...

I am like this guy; looked into all the same stuff over the years.
Additions:

Flywheels: Dept. E helped develop viable designs which scale long ago but the costs keep it a niche product for data centers needing a buffer while the gas generators turn on.

Elevated Mass: ridiculous idea from a green website last year by some german engineer or professor. When I did the math, I figured I'd have to move the whole house 3m upward to get enough mass/power as a $30,000 battery pack (it's more feasible if you have a cliff near bye and your needs are tiny.)

Employer car charging. Not a time-shift; however, storing the massive amount of energy a car uses during the day only to dump that back into the car at night wastes a great deal of energy from all the conversion in that process. Employer parking lots charging to recharge employee cars would make electric cars more realistic for people who are off grid.

Public take over of the grid. The electric grid largely follows the roads (public land, usually public roads) and should be run by the public so we can stop having corrupt grid owners fighting against the distributed grid the future demands. Power suppliers can compete on the grid just as businesses compete while using the roads. This would also lower grid costs as governments are better able to think long term and bury high voltage DC power lines which reduce long term system costs but require upfront investment. This would also foster a market for power storage as the prices on such a grid could spike as a cloud passes bye... it would become a stock market like game.... (where Mr. Burns really could provide by blocking out the sun!)

Even if you can simulate every atom in the atmosphere for such a situation, we are talking about fluid dynamics! The least predictable thing not really known to man or god. Best you can do is guess general trends for short periods of time or in the case of climate models, you have to get extremely general to be at all accurate.

This is worse than accurately simulating a human brain and ending up with intelligence (without preloading a living brain scan; even so, it would be silly to think the machine would predict YOU. just as an instant clone of you would diverge from you.)